Six years ago, ten-year-old Sophie Albright disappeared from a shopping mall. Her mother, Jesse, is left in a self-destructive limbo, haunted by memories of her intense and difficult child, who was obsessed with birds. Trapped in her grief and guilt, Jesse stumbles through her workdays at a bookstore and spends her off hours poring over Sophie’s bird journals or haunting the mall to search for the face of her missing child.

When Star Silverman, Sophie’s best friend, starts working at the bookstore, Jesse is uncomfortable around the sarcastic teen, who is a constant reminder of her daughter. But Star has secrets of her own, and her childhood memories could be the key to solving Sophie’s disappearance.

With help from Star and Kentucky “Tuck” Barnes, a private detective on the trail of another missing girl, Jesse may finally get some closure, one way or the other.

Sophie Last Seen by Marlene Adelstein

Sophie’s disappearance will send her mother and her best friend into a tailspin of self-destruction, but while one will hide her pain, the other will build dungeon of self-flagellation, torment and guilt. Sophie’s disappearance was the straw that broke her mother’s life, her marriage and her relationship with the world as she hunts for any clue, any secret meaning in what she saw as “signs” or “clues” that would lead her to her young daughter.

SOPHIE LAST SEEN by Marlene Adelstein is dark, edgy and holds an atmosphere of brittle desperation and bitter hope. How far would you go to find your lost child? Would you give up living? Would you stop living in reality to live in the world of what-ifs and if-only? How many years would it take to finally accept help, or accept the fact that your child may never come back or that your marriage was broken long before?

Certainly not a light or fast-moving tale, we are witness to a woman lost in her own shattered world and it is not pretty. For me, this tale was a little overlong and slightly repetitive in some places, while not quite developed enough in others, but it does add to Jesse’s chaotic mental health and her identifying only with HER pain. The magical touch at the end and the revelations of how special Sophie truly was what made this book for me.